Hacking Castlevania slowdowns etc.

[hova1]

i heard that Castlevania is not running smooth on a R4. what can i do to improve speed without buying a card from kingston?

 

[Ferrariman]

Buy a Kingston Japan Microsd, preferably the 1gb. thats all you can do.

 

[Agjsdfd]

Or PNY. It works smooth with PNY aswell. Well it "worked", dont have the r4 nymore

 

[Raestloz]

People say try to format your microSD with FAT16, FAT16 is faster, but FAT32 wins by overall, well if you prefer speed than balance, try it

 

[Holaitsme]

buy a kingston jap with i was able to play castlevania games with no slowdowns perfect

 

[hova1]

People say try to format your microSD with FAT16, FAT16 is faster, but FAT32 wins by overall, well if you prefer speed than balance, try it

sorry for bumping my old thread but what do you mean with more speed than balance?

 

[jagerstaffel]

People say try to format your microSD with FAT16, FAT16 is faster, but FAT32 wins by overall, well if you prefer speed than balance, try it

sorry for bumping my old thread but what do you mean with more speed than balance?

FAT16 has a smaller file character limit, FAT32 has a higher limit. FAT32 is balanced because it can support the higher capacity cards (FAT16 on a 4GB card will kill its performance) Although with SD storage media, what matters most is what speed the microcontroller is and whether a backup FAT exists. Personally though the R4 won't read cards without a backup FAT, so thats out. It's the reason why people prefer popular brand name cards because those manufacturers don't put crappy microcontroller chips inside like clone cards do.

There's more to storage media than just the above notes, though. Like cluster size, which can affect overall file space availability concerning which type of files are used. Windows formatting does not allow you to set that or whether a Backup FAT is set up. I use Palm devices and Pocket PCs so I know quite much. It would help if you had a Pocket PC because those devices have programs that can allow you to format a card with whatever settings wont kill it. But then again who'd buy a PPC just for formatting storage media >_>

A program I've seen recommended is SwissKnife by CompuApps. Maybe that'll work for you.

 

[Another World]

use the command prompt format command not the GUI version built into windows. you will get more control over things like cluster size.

-another world

C:\format /?
Formats a disk for use with Windows XP.

FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q]
FORMAT volume [/Q]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
/FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, or NTFS).
/V:label Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format.
/C NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed
by default.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened
handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
/A:size Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings
are strongly recommended for general use.
NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).

Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
following restrictions on the number of clusters on a volume:

FAT: Number of clusters

 

[FAST6191]

First Castlevania. Only the intro film suffers. Ignore it or if you want some more space replace it with a 0k file (rom hacking and the rom ripping links in my signature has the info).

Second. Crashes if reading is not fast enough.
Two options (assuming a new cart/memory card is not an option):
Make sure the cart is not fragmented (copy all off, format/delete all and copy back) and then do what others above me have said.

Hack the game to make things less chaotic. The usual hack is to the sound file and I seem to recall there is a patch around somewhere (there are several threads on castlevania, it should be in one of those).